“The object of your practice should first of all be yourself. Your love for the other, your ability to love another person, depends on your ability to love yourself.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart

“Searching all directions with one’s awareness,

one finds no one dearer than oneself.

In the same way, others are dear to themselves.

So one should not hurt others if one loves oneself.”

~ The Buddha, from the Udana

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

~Rumi

 

Dear Friends,

If you’ve entered a grocery store on the last two weeks you may have been assailed by red and pink hearts, balloons with sweet saying and isles of candy and cards that will communicate our most earnest regard and care. We call this showing our love. Whether a plush card or box of truffles will get that job done is uncertain. But I do know that there is a universal desire and need for love in our lives. Infants who do not experience caretaking connection or love, do not thrive. As human beings, we are designed to live in collectives and share this natural impulse to love and care. In our nuclear family system living in a tech world, we often are separated from our relations; we move for work or school and can feel disconnected and estranged from the love and acceptance of community and family. We can get out of the habit of loving others and of loving ourselves.

Loving ourselves may seem anathema to Buddhist practice, but it is an essential ingredient in our ability to connect with the care and desire to alleviate suffering in the world—this includes our own suffering as well. Loving ourselves is not outside of the realm of our practice. As we look deeply, we can see that this self we inhabit is not so fixed and permanent. Beginning its time on Earth, we began as two cells, then four. Now we are big people with histories and identities.

As adults, we tend to parcel out our love to those who are worthy, and innocent. Those who bring suffering on themselves and others are more difficult to love. That is for sure. But aren’t we those people too? Don’t we make mistakes and cause ourselves to suffer? Are we the ones who are thinking the repetitive thoughts that cause doubt and anxiety? Are we carrying our own internal critic who reminds us that we are not qualified to meet the challenges of our lives? For some of us, we may be our own worst enemy.

One way to practice with this habit is by shifting our view from interior to exterior and practicing regarding ourselves with care. This exercise is designed to help us connect with the potential for loving and care that is always within but gets clouded over by comparing and judging mind.

Caring Hands Practice: Begin by looking at your hands. Study the palms and the backs of your hands. See the length of the fingers, the span of your reach, the breadth of the palm. Notice the skin of the hands and the markings of age, strength, or resiliency. Consider some of the skills these hands have: do the play an instrument, cook, care for animals, heal? How have these hands brought love to your life and others?

Looking at your hands, can you see your mother and father in your hands, your grandparents? Do some of their talents and traits continue through these hands? Consider your lineage, your great grandparents and beyond; think of all the talents and skills that have been transmitted to you. The DNA and genetic material of generations are available to you right now in your own hands. Recognizing all the qualities that live in your hands, some beneficial and some not. Ask yourself what you want to manifest in the world through your hands? What do you want the legacy of your hands to be?

Choose a relative who was a figure of kindness and care. It could be one you never knew, a great-grandmother for example. Choose a self-care activity this week and allow the hands of this relative to participate. Have your great grandmother’s hands wash your face, or allow your great, great-grandfather you never knew, to brush your hair, or make you breakfast. How would this ancestor treat you, the unknown grandchild of their child? Access their tenderness and reverence as you do this one task. Explore what it feels like to infuse the intention of love and service in your hands as they take care of you. What does receiving loving touch feel like? Is it different from how you usually care for yourself? This valentine’s day spend some moments practicing love for one who is often overlooked and needs our love and care as much as anyone else—ourselves.

May we all trust our light,

Celia

 

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

~Derek Walcott